1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a device that corrects a red eye image contained in an image photographed by using an electronic flash unit.
2. Description of Related Art
There is a technology known in the related art that is adopted to correct the “red eye phenomenon” manifesting in an image (see Japanese Laid Open Patent Publication No. H 6-350914). The “red eye phenomenon”, in which the pupils in the eyes of people and the like are rendered in red color in images photographed by using an electronic flash unit, is caused as the illuminating light emitted from the electronic flash device is reflected from within the eyeballs. Japanese Laid Open Patent Publication No. H 6-350914 discloses a technology whereby the red eye data portion is extracted from the digital image data read from the raw data and the extracted red eye data portion is corrected to a normal pupil color. A problem with the method, in which the red eye data portion is extracted from the entire image data, is that when the data size of the image data is large, the red eye portion extraction processing takes a long time. Japanese Laid Open Patent Publication No. 2000-299812 discloses an electronic camera that executes photographing operations by using an electronic flash unit and without using the electronic flash unit, extracts the red eye data portion in the image by calculating the correlation between the images obtained through the individual photographing operations and executes red eye correction processing on the extracted red eye data portion.